1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an E-mail printing apparatus for executing a print of E-mail, its E-mail printing method, and a memory medium.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, in association with the spread of a network using the LAN (Local Area Network) or WAN (Wide Area Network), information exchanging means by E-mail through Intranet/Internet has generally been used. A mechanism for transferring E-mail will be briefly explained. First, E-mail data is formed by E-mail client software (hereinafter, simply referred to as a UA (User Agent)) and transmitted to a nearest E-mail transfer apparatus (hereinafter, simply referred to as an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent)). According to the MTA, received E-mail is stored into an auxiliary memory device in the apparatus and transmitted to the MTA to which the mail should be transferred next. A similar transfer process is repetitively executed among a plurality of MTAs existing between the sender and a final destination, so that the E-mail is transferred to the final MTA as if a bucket was passed from one person to another person. Finally, the E-mail is stored into a memory device in an E-mail apparatus serving as a final destination, or the received E-mail is stored into a memory device in a reception E-mail administration server having a mail box (post-office box) for administrating the received E-mail for every E-mail user. After that, the E-mail is extracted and processed for every user by the UA.
Generally, in many cases, the UA is used on a personal computer (hereinafter, referred to as PC). The user can browse contents of the E-mail sent to himself by the PC. Further, if there is a printer which can be used from the PC, the received E-mail can be also printed by using the printer. However, in this case, the user needs to actively perform a printing operation to the printer by using some applications. Particularly, in case of the user who needs to periodically print the received mail, since it is necessary to periodically execute the printing operation every time, means for automatically printing the received mail is demanded by such a user. To meet such a request, in recent years, an apparatus such that, by making the UA operative on the printer, the printer directly receives E-mail of a specific destination and automatically prints the E-mail without needing the printing operation of the user has also been proposed.
Among the foregoing apparatuses, there is also an apparatus which can also print image data annexed to E-mail. In such an apparatus, if MIME information in the E-mail, which will be explained hereinlater, is imperfect, there is a case where the annexed image data is printed as body text data of the E-mail. Even if the image data itself is printed as text data, it is merely printed as a meaningless character train and a print result is usually obtained by tens of pages. Therefore, a large quantity of wasteful pages are printed eventually.